The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-12-28
TWO MESSAGES ON THE TARIFF.
President Cleyeland's Ignorance of the First
Principles of Political Economy.

| North American Review for January. 1855.
Pulses beat more quickly, the joy of battle
/ lights up manly faces. and it is a dramatic
moment, when the vessel chased as merchant
man opens her matches for her deviish crew to
swarm on deck, drops the seeming stripe and
discloses shotted guns and runs up the black
| flag. Freebooter and free-trader have much in
common. There h ss been enough of piratical
concealment enough of false pretense With
| joy that President Cleveland, brave as
| men often who do not comprehend what
| they are doing, strips of Democratic DISCUSSES,
loads his annual message with free-trado
theories and propositions of startling breadth
and meaning and compels his party to fight
| against protection to seek another candi-
| date
Like lightning comes the answer from Paris.
The Presidents thought that internal war taxes
should be continued, in order to deprive home
industry of that measure of defense which a
tariff only for revenue would naturally give is
exposed without mercy. His abandonment of
coast defense in order to make the reduction of
duties greater, and thus to make the blow fall
more heavily industry, is contrasted with
Mr.. Tilden's eloquent letter. His proposal to
open free of charge the greatest and most profit
able market in the world to foreigners who are
to bear part of the cost of maintaining free
institutions here, his bgoted prejudice against
American manufacturers and their workingmen,
his desire to take away the scanty profit of
American wool growers, whose laundering trust
in Democratic promises made his election posi-
BILE, meet a rebuke at the hands of Mr. Blaine
which gladdens the hearts of true Americans.
Never has hurled spear been more deftly caught
sent back with startling swiftness. and
surer aim. The land laughs with applause
Thousands who could not vote for Mr.. Blaine
in 1884 wish they.had not then mistaken sham
for real reform the babbe of slauderers for
''proofs of Holy Writ" or their own inhamed
vanity for tenderness of conscience. So apt and
conclusive is the reply, SO strong and impressive
the defense OF American interests. that the Re-
publican party seems in some danger of suppos-
ing its work all DONE its foes dispersed by
single Shot and its victory already secured.
The question now is whether the Republican
party is fit to govern The first and largest part
of the work of self-government is to convince and
educate. Republicans have the opportunity for
which they have prayed twenty years. The
question is whether they have waited so long
and left economic weapons to rust so far. and
accustomed themselves to rely upon other agen-
cies completely, that they equal to the
opportunity now that it has come.
Thanks to the President, the issue against pro-
lection is made in the weakest way. In compre-
henson in courage, he resembles the school
boy. Dogmatic and positive where a competent
free trader would be most vague aud cautious.
he discharges obsolete and long abandoned the
cries which resem BILE economic arms of precision
no more than Queen Anne blunderbuss re-
sembIes modern Lebel rifle No doubt the
President himself and his friends will shrink
from the translation of his crude phrases into
economic language, but 1t will be the first duty
of Republicans In Congress to show that he has
betrayed a melancholy and hopeless ignorance
Both protectionists and the more intelligent
free-traders perfectly aware that the Presi-
dents supposition. that prices of protected prod
ucts a rule enhanced to the full extent
of the protective duties is entirely untrue Yet
cha riraa of fho pr ;S
this single false assumption, abandoned years
ago by every moderately informed free-trader.
His supporters, cruelty handicapped by his ig-
norance, will now have to explain how glassware
came to be bought in Pittsburg for Cunard
steamers; how American bridge builders secured
the contract to put thousands of tons of Ameri-
steel into an Australian bridge: how PennsyI-
vania rails went TO Mexico, or New Jersey loco
motives to Europe, American mining
chiEery to British mines South Africa, and
by what miracle 1t comes to pass that American
cottons sold in Manchester and American
cutlery in Sheffield. Linked with these are the
other fallacies that foreign prices would be what
they now are if American production were to
cease, and that cheaper materials can be had by
depending upon foreign supplies. In 1879 an in
creased demand for iron from this country,
amounting to $50, 900 tons. actually raised the
prices of pgron in Great Britain 67 per cent.
of bariron &c per cent. and of some other manu-
featured kinds 100 per cent, and yet Mr.. Cleve-
land imagines that demand five ten times
greater, consequent upon o removal of duties,
would not lift the foreign price much the ex-
listing duty of 43 per cent Similar examples by
the hundred could be presented of sudden and
fatal rise in the cost of materials. when this
country has suffered itself to become dependent
upon foreign supplies.
Neither do competent men appeal any longer
to vulgar prejudice by suggesting, as President
Cleveland does, that protected U facturers
dividing mountainous dividends. or that pro-
tected workers are getting unfairly large wages
There is no excuse for Ignorance. It would cost
the President no trouble to ascertain that even
at least half the iron furnaces in the United
States earning nothing for capital. and that
of the more fortunate, great many
would be glad, as Messrs. Hewitt g. Cooper act
ually proposed TO their men. to lease their works
the basis of per cent. for the capital in
vested.
1t is creditable Mr.. Cleveland that he
seeks to set OF her farmers against the wool
growers. Il happens that wool is grown in every
State, and excluding counties the borders OF
civilization, which are but names without popu-
lation, out of 2. 400 counties in all the States.
wool is grown in every county except thirty-six,
though there were also thirty -seven others IN
1850 where it was rot grown to substantial ex-
tent 1t is the development of manufactures
and mining which has made the farm lands OF
New York, New jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio
Il, 600, 900 acres. worth $3.50 000 O00
$47 Is per acre, while the farm lands of Virginia,
Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee. 3d.
O00, COO acres are worth only $S5S, 000 000 or
$40 l. per acre. Knowing what protection does
for them farming counties in the North
for il strongly. Knowing nothing about it, farm
ing counties at the South imagine that it plum
ders them. And water settles in low places,